The Borders of Fantastica

It's been quite a while since I posted; the Holidays were packed and I spent a week touring the bayous and rod-iron gilded balconies of Louisiana with my girl for a week, which was spectacular. New Orleans is a hell of a place and Louisiana perhaps the most interesting American State.

But let's get back into the meat of things, here. We've talked about the Talisman and I think Cam has said pretty much all I have to say about that, everything about Jack's relationship with Richard and that wonderful Alice in Wonderland correlation. The great blighted lands to the west of the Territories are like the great blight of Mordor or Robert Jordan's Great Blight itself, the land of Nod east of Eden. That often used trope; of a world wasted away by evil or industrialization or magic or technology comes up so many times and it is always interesting. I've always had a fascination with those great wastelands - the uncharted East of Arthurian legend or James Axle's fabulous WASTELAND pulp. The great roving green fires, the "Worms" that even the devil feared, all of them are great concepts!

But let's talk about Fantastica. It is worth mentioning that I'd already been well acquainted with the film, worthy of mention in itself, and the Disney cartoon series (unmemorable entirely except in that it existed and I watched it). Interestingly enough, the book is what heavily motivated me to make this blog - when me and Cam were talking about The Talisman and I had read less than a 100. The Neverending Story is the closest I've come to reading The Legend of Zelda in a book - before, mind you, it bores into Bastian's character. Something about meeting beautiful people who live in a silver city built by creatures ugly and ashamed of their true forms, or of communities of will-o-wisps, make me think of Gorons and Zora and pirates and dungeons. Less logic and more magic. There is a juvenile sort of mad joy I take in wandering into fabulous jungles where beings spin and weave starlight into crystalline contraptions, where forest sing siren songs, where life and death and the cycle of natural rebirth are symbolized in the life-and-death cycle of a gorgeous, moonlit jungle and scorching desert of many colours reigned over by a fire god so majestic and yet so governed by the rules of his domain he is embedded into my mind and I find it hard not to want to plagiarize. Like Cam, it makes me wonder why fantasy is often less fantastic than you'd expect. The Four Wind Giants, governing the cardinal directions and constantly at war (much like the Stone Giants of the Hobbit, before Middle-Earth became less silly and more ponderous).

That concept of Fairy, then, comes to mind. Of the magic world teteering into this one, of Fantastica having no physical borders. Concepts I've read and enjoyed in The Broken Sword and the Kingkiller Chronicle, where Fairy doesn't necessarily have logic or monarchical lineages. Luckdragons, Child Empresses, and a mountain of ivory carved into a city at the center of a world without borders - whose borders by definition are as amorphous as the imaginations which fertilize the land.

The plot operates to the same lofty melody of many children's stories, much like The Hobbit, it the bildungsroman tradition, and is equally as enjoyable. I read through it with gusto, and enjoyed every minute of it.

In any case, there are a bunch of things I want to talk about - notable Watership Down and The Hobbit movie in my other blog. The next novel we're supposed to read here is Gene Wolfe's Something or Other, which I need to pick up. I've read a shit-ton over the holidays I expect I'll be talking about, and actuall Cam we should look into Jack Vance's The Dying Earth if we're going to talk about fantasy classics. 

The Many-Colored Death

I picked up The Neverending Story and now I'm about halfway through it.

I saw the movie once, about twenty years ago, and don't remember it very well. I remember it ending about a third of the way into the book, though. I can imagine why that happened, of course. The book is enormous. Things happen as rapidly here as they do in any fable. The prose is light and airy but at the same time the story can feel exhausting.

It's another case where a rational world acts as the anchor of our understanding for irrationality. Nobody's life is more rational (and sad) than ol' Bastian, but there are very few worlds that revel in their irrationality as much as Fantastica. Some of the imagery in this book is delivered so lightly while conveying ideas so huge, it really makes me question why more fantasies aren't more fantastic.

It's got me thinking a lot about storytelling in general, and how something being a cornerstone of a fantastic world does not necessarily mean that it has to be mundane, either for the habits or (especially) for us, the reader. So far, The Neverending Story has about four or five really important characters whose perspectives make them irreplaceable in the story, but they're just as well realized as any of the characters in a more grounded fantasy story like Sapkowski's Witcher stories. The difference is that they're ensconced in a world where you can capture and make crafts out of starlight, where a forest of trees can sing a song so beautiful that unwary travelers will stand and listen to it until they die, where a Childlike Empress can live in a tower that it more properly called a mountain carved into a city.

This is a very fun book.

Rationality and Irrationality

So I drew comparison between The Talisman and Alice in Wonderland in an earlier post, and that's apt in a few ways. Two heroes, themselves very rational, who are thrust into irrational worlds.

Each of those stories has three arcs that are defined by the companions they have throughout, regardless of whether they are constant companions (for Jack) or not (for Alice). Each story has the companion who leads the hero into irrationality (the White Rabbit and Speedy Parker), each story has the denizen of the irrational land who could not possibly be in a rational world (the Cheshire Cat and Wolf), and the rational companion who is so grounded in rationality that they cannot share in the irrationality that the hero has to go through (Alice's sister and Richard Sloat).

I like the bits where characters are traveling together. It doesn't do one a lot of good in adventure stories to just have a person traveling by themselves, because travel isn't inherently interesting. Everywhere Alice and Jack go there's a bad obstacle that needs to be surmounted, and a little voice whispering in their ear suggesting what the solution might be. Alice's sister got very little screentime compared to one Richard Sloat, but maybe that's for the best - the irrationality of the Territories, after all, very nearly kills poor Richard.

One of the common elements in a lot of King's works is that places are more powerful than people, usually. People can conquer places, but by entering one you become a part of it, and you must fight the system you have entered. A haunted house is much scarier than any particular thing that lives in it, if you leverage it that way. It's like places soak up the secreted evils of decades and centuries and become reflections of the people in them.

I haven't got a lot to say right now.

I'm going to start reading The Neverending Story tomorrow. I suspect that one won't take as long.

Here and Now

Man, I love Wolf.

One of the big appeals of stories like The Talisman or Alice in Wonderland, where you have a character from a rational world thrust into a magical world, is that your protagonist is so grounded in rationality that he brings that sense of rationality with him into an irrational situation. Sure he may be ignorant about certain things, but he's still wry in comparison to the people he's interacting with. Maybe not as clever, but he brings his own grounded perspective and holds onto that in the face of insanity.

Wolf is the opposite of that. He's all Territories: huge, and full of huge feelings, and slow, and incredibly strong. When I first read this book all those years ago, Wolf was my favorite character, partially because he was so big and dumb and strong and loyal, partially because he was a werewolf and what ten-year-old doesn't think werewolves are awesome? But you take this guy, who's used to a world that's been technologically stagnant since the dawn of time, from a place that's pure and magical like the daydreams of a child, and you put him into our world, and you're given a very different dynamic. The air makes him sick, the people frighten him, and half the things he sees are so alien and terrifying he's constantly on the edge of lying down and just hoping it all goes away when he opens his eyes.

Jack's cruel to Wolf, too, but in small ways, understandable ways because he's only a boy. Wolf doesn't have an ounce of cruelty in him, and if I remember he never even properly responds or hardens in the face of mistreatment. He's just a good companion.

This story actually is part of what convinced me that on some level it can be beneficial for the wandering hero to have a traveling companion, or at least a recurring character to bounce their thoughts off of. It helps make them grounded and believable, and provides a sense of continuity for their growth. Alice worked at least partially because she always had someone to talk to, some wave of madness which could be dashed against her Victorian reason, and Jack works in much the same way in relation to - well, to a lot of characters, but most especially to Wolf.

A hero can function pretty well on his own, but it's always going to be the parts where he can talk to someone that people will remember forever.

“If one good deed in all my life I did, / I do repent it from my very Soule.”

"I follow him to serve my turn upon him."

I'm going to take a moment here to speak a few words on the 'Bad Man' topic. I've restrained myself from pushing forward with the Talisman in order to let Cam catch up - no point in overshooting him, we're both moving forward with The Neverending Story at the same time. Also, Cam, for your SA - I recently found Watership Down in my closet.

On the subject of the "Bad Man" I will agree that King is despicably crafty and accomplished at laying out his villains. Kathy Bates, Steve Klemp, Jack Torrance, et cetera. This is true throughout the body of his work, culminating in Randall Flagg (the 'Dark Man' exemplified). Incidentally, my favourite chapter of my favourite book concerning one of my favourite figures in literature is the chapter detailing Randall Flagg on the road in The Stand. Morgan Sloat is another great example, although not so complex as Flagg or others (more simplified in the Disney sense, nasty through and through and barely sympathetic). When he is introduced, he is quickly made reprehensible and a glimpse of his past revealed to allow us to draw our own conclusions. There is a fallacy in speculative fiction that great villains can only be great if they are also sympathetic and their actions explained if not empathized. When Darth Vader (and I know I reference Star Wars often, but why shouldn't I, if we're talking about story-telling?) first entered the screen - all we needed to know about his past was that he was a Fallen Jedi. We write his story in our head - what needs to be written - and move on.

I'm older now and may be no longer the "target audience" of The Talisman, although I still find it endearing and magical. When I was younger, the character of Osmond was despicable then and despicable now although he is a thinner character these days. I am more analytical, require more explanation, and as an adult it is harder for me to take certain things at face value. When a character is as amoral as Osmond, he can be done in either one of two ways. He be done in the style of Mickey Peterson in Bronson, leave the hole where his empathy and sympathy and humanity should be act as the focus of the story (incidentally also like Patrick from King's It); or the story can focus on the construction of such a character (or the flaws in that construction). Either way, more time needs to be spend on that character. Osmond is diabolic and shit-house crazy, but really not enough time is spent inside the external performance. 

Sloat is a superior example, despite being a different character. 

You don't always need that internal dialogue to have a great villain. For fuck sake, Morgoth from Tolkien's mythos is never even characterized and look at the acidic impact his presence has on the series. Great villains alter the environments around them. They direct, impact, or facilitate the opposing forces which drive the plot of a story. You don't always need to be inside their heads to make the story better, but sometimes it's nice to know why they are acting on that side of the field. 

The problem with the second sort of villain is that it's very hard to write about them. Outside the impact they have on the series, they are uninteresting. Why do you think there isn't a single chapter about Sauron? Why is Saruman more interesting? Nobody cares about Palpatine. Morgoth is only interesting in that his exploits are referenced, in the legendary context in which they thrive. 

It is occasionally difficult to pick one of the two. I can't wait for the next "Sloat In This World" chapter. 

The Bad Man

You know, I love the idea of bad guys. It's one of the reasons I like King as much as I do: King is very good at writing crazy people, or just bad people. If someone told me Mr. Straub writes the evil in men and women as well as King does I would pick up some of his books right away.

I guess I should regardless, since I like the Talisman so much.

Anyway still only about 200 pages in. I think the personality that strikes me the most is one Uncle Morgan, a.k.a. Morgan Sloat, who is a Bad Man. He stands in contrast to other bad men because he's an incredibly evil character in a lot of ways, and he's also very believable, but at no point does the book try to portray him as being sympathetic in any way. He's not just rotten, he's also petty, but he's a petty man who can do enormous harm. He would bring down a country for the sake of controlling more money, would murder people with his own hands if it meant he had more influence. There's something fearful in that, something visceral and raw, and in spite of the fact that he's the least physically intimidating man on the planet his presence still communicates a very real danger. The idea is that there's a divide, a big line that separates the people who will not harm people overmuch - like our good friend Jack - and then people on the other side of the line are very bad indeed, and can't be fought on their own terms by the good guys.

I don't think the story would be able to convey this dichotomy of evil action vs. good restraint nearly as well if it weren't for the fact that Jack Sawyer is, in many senses, completely defenseless. He's too good at heart to really hurt anybody if he can just get away from them, and he can't defend himself if the other guy doesn't quite think the same way. Constant tension.

Man, about the 200 page mark? That bit that takes place in Oatley? People talk about fear as a product of cities, but nothing seems quite as soul-gobbling as a small town that has set out to do you harm.

Jack Lights Out

I first read this book when I was about thirteen or fourteen, I think, so it was an easy ten years ago at least, and coming back to it now I'm surprised by how much more clearly I can visualize almost everything.

I find myself wondering, often and consistently, if I was smarter when I was younger. I remember my thoughts being faster, or I think I do, like some quicksilver quality of my mind has started to slip away as I age, like I'm in a decline by the time I hit 25. That's not an entirely reasonable fear, but I am aware that the way my mind works is changing an it kind of frightens me because that means I'm necessarily losing parts of myself, like everyone does.

In that I share something with Jack, and I'm always surprised when book characters make me realize that about myself. Jack is a kid whose entire sense of self, in the beginning of the story, is framed by the losses he has either experienced or might experience. That's powerful stuff, especially when it makes you feel the loss too.

One of my favorite bits in stories is the stranger who comes to town, or the Bad Man. Now it can be a bad woman, too, but in lots of modern stories - especially King stories - it's the Bad Man, the man in black who scares you in ways that are different from a witch or wizard (I can't think of many Bad Women in the same vein as Flagg, if any, but I think that kind of character should be fairly easy to pull off). And Morgan Sloat, on the phone, comes across like a Bad Man, but he's overshadowed by a more effective device, which is the Bad World, where the entire world appears to be focused on making things bad for the hero, and coming apart at the seams for the sake of spiting him. The little dip in the sand, that swirls and blinks and laughs? That's as bad as it gets.

I like that stuff.

I just got to a bit where Jack drank the juice. Hopefully will be reading a bit more from here on in.